Salem Elzway is a historian of the twentieth century United States whose work engages the intersections of labor and race, political economy, security policy, and Science, Technology, and Society (STS). His in-progress book will provide the first scholarly history of the industrial robot and explores the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and the political economy of American industrial policy during and after the Cold War. It charts how a variety of actors, institutions, and structural forces in defense-funded laboratories, on and off the factory floor, and in the halls of power transformed the robot of science fiction into the industrial robot of science fact. The book enjoins the subfields of labor history, political history, and the history of technology to map and help navigate the sociotechnical entanglements and technopolitics of what automation was, who would control it, and for what purposes. At its core, the book demonstrates how the pursuit of “security” via the socialization of technological development and the privatization of technological management exacerbated economic insecurity and social inequality. Salem’s work has been supported by the Charles Babbage Institute, the Hagley Museum and Library, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation at the University of Virginia, and the Smithsonian Institution. He has a BSBA in Finance from the University of Nebraska and received his PhD in History from the University of Michigan.